Our history in depth – Company – Google 1995-1997 1995 Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford. Larry, 22, a U Michigan grad, is considering the school; Sergey, 21, is assigned to show him around. 1996 Larry and Sergey begin collaborating on a search engine called BackRub . BackRub operates on Stanford servers for more than a year—eventually taking up too much bandwidth. 1997 Google.com is registered as a domain on September 15. The name—a play on the word "googol," a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros—reflects Larry and Sergey's mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web. 1998 April Larry launches a monthly " Google Friends Newsletter " to inform fans about company news. (We've since shut down Google Friends Newsletter in favor of blogs, Google+ and other methods of sharing news .) August Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes a check for $100,000 to an entity that doesn't exist yet—a company called Google Inc.

Before heading to the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, Larry and Sergey incorporate the iconic Man into the logo to keep people informed about where the Google crew would be for a few days—our first doodle . September On September 4, Google files for incorporation in California. Larry and Sergey open a bank account in the newly-established company's name and deposit Andy Bechtolsheim's check. Google sets up workspace in Susan Wojcicki's garage on Santa Margarita Ave., Menlo Park, Calif. Larry and Sergey hire their first employee. Craig Silverstein is a fellow CS grad student at Stanford who works at Google for 10+ years before joining education startup Khan Academy. December "PC Magazine" reports that Google "has an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results" and recognizes us as the search engine of choice in the Top 100 Web Sites for 1998. 1999 February We outgrow our garage office and move to new digs at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto with just eight employees. April Yoshka, our first "company" dog, comes to work with our senior vice president of operations, Urs Hölzle.

May Omid Kordestani joins to run sales—employee #11. Ten years later, Omid steps down from his active role in the company, becoming a senior advisor. June Our first press release announces a $25 million round from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins; John Doerr and Michael Moritz join the board. August We move to our first Mountain View location: 2400 Bayshore . Mountain View is a few miles south of Stanford University, and north of the older towns of Silicon Valley: Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose. November We hire our first chef, Charlie Ayers (his previous claim to fame was catering for the Grateful Dead; he now owns a cafe in Palo Alto). Today Google's food programs focus on providing healthy, sustainably sourced food to fuel Googlers around the world. 2000 April We announce the MentalPlex : Google's ability to read your mind as you visualize the search results you want. Thus begins our annual foray in the Silicon Valley tradition of April 1 hoaxes. May We win our first Webby Awards: Technical Achievement (voted by judges) and Peoples' Voice (voted by users).

We run a series of doodles featuring a little alien—our first doodle series and the first doodle not associated with any particular event. The first 10 language versions of Google.com are released : French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish. Today, search is available in 150+ languages. July Our first international doodle celebrates Bastille Day in France. September Google New York starts in a Starbucks on 86th Street with a one-person sales "team." Today, more than 4,000 Googlers work in our New York office, a former Port Authority building at 111 Eighth Avenue. We start offering search in Chinese, Japanese and Korean—bringing our total number of supported languages to 15. October Google AdWords launches with 350 customers. The self-service ad program promises online activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance feedback. The first doodle by a guest artist, Lorie Loeb , goes live. Since then, many artists have lent their talents to the Google homepage, from Wayne Thiebaud to Christoph Niemann to Eric Carle.

December Google Toolbar is released—a browser plug-in that makes it possible to search without visiting the Google homepage. 2001 February In our first public acquisition, we acquire Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service, an archive of 500 million Usenet discussions dating back to 1995. We add search and browse features and launch it as Google Groups . March Eric Schmidt is named chairman of the board of directors. April Swedish Chef becomes a language preference in search. We offer several "joke" languages, including Klingon. July Google Images launches, initially offering access to 250 million images. August We open our first international office, in Tokyo, Japan . Eric Schmidt becomes our CEO. Larry and Sergey are named presidents of products and technology, respectively. December We release our first annual Google Zeitgeist , a visual look at what millions of people searched for over the year just ending. It's a revealing look at the year that was, from "Harry Potter" to "Osama Bin Laden." We continue to release Zeitgeist every year.

2002 February The first Google product for enterprises is released: the Google Search Appliance is a yellow box that businesses can plug into their computer network to enable search capabilities for their own documents. We release a major overhaul for AdWords , including new cost-per-click pricing. April We release the first set of Google APIs, enabling developers to query more than 2 billion web documents and program in their favorite environment, including Java, Perl and Visual Studio. May We release Google Labs, which let people try out beta technologies and was the proving ground for many Google features, such as Google Transit, Google Scholar and Google Trends. Nearly 10 years later, we wind down Google Labs in order to prioritize our product efforts. September Google News launches with 4,000 news sources. Today Google News includes 50,000+ news sources, with 70 regional editions in different languages. All told, Google News and other services send publishers 6 billion clicks per month as of 2012. October A few months after our first employee in Australia starts selling AdWords from her lounge room, we open our office in Sydney —the second office after Japan in APAC. Our first local AdWords client is eBay Australia.

December With the launch of Froogle (which became Google Shopping in 2012), people can search for stuff to buy. 2003 February We acquire Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger . Nearly as old as Google itself (Blogger started in 1999), today more than 300 million people visit Blogger every month. March We announce Google AdSense , a new content-targeted advertising service that enables publishers large and small to access Google's vast network of advertisers. (The following month, we acquire Applied Semantics, whose technology bolsters the service named AdSense.) April We launch Google Grants —the nonprofit edition of AdWords, which provides nonprofit organizations with $10,000 per month in in-kind AdWords advertising to promote their iniatives. October Registration opens for programmers to compete for cash prizes and recognition at the first ever Code Jam. Today, Google Code Jam attracts tens of thousands of contestants each year, and the finals have traveled to Tokyo, Dublin, London and New York City. December We launch Google Print (now known as Google Books ), indexing small excerpts from books to appear in search results. In 2004, the program expands through digital scanning partnerships with libraries.

To date, we've scanned more than 20 million books. We launch Orkut , in its heyday the most important social network in several countries. March We move to the new "Googleplex" at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View with 800+ employees. We introduce Google Local, offering relevant neighborhood business listings, maps, and directions. (Eventually, Local is combined with Google Maps.) April We launch Gmail on April Fools' Day. At first invite-only, today it boasts more than 425 million users. Fun fact: our internal code name for Gmail was "Caribou," inspired by a Dilbert cartoon. The Official Google Blog goes live. Today, we offer a wide variety of ways —including Google+ pages and Twitter accounts—for people to get news from Google, in many different languages. May We announce the first winners of the Google Anita Borg Scholarship , awarded to outstanding women studying computer science. Today these scholarships are open to students in Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, India, Middle East, New Zealand, and the United States. July We acquire Picasa , which helps people organize and display photos online.

August Our Initial Public Offering of 19,605,052 shares of Class A common stock takes place on Wall Street. Opening price: $85 per share. September Our Hong Kong office is the first Google office to open in the Greater China region. October We acquire Keyhole, a digital mapping company whose technology will later become Google Earth . Google SMS launches. This service enabled users to send text search queries to GOOGL or 466453 on mobile devices. We formally open our European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland , with 150 multilingual Googlers, a visit from Sergey and Larry, and recognition from the Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland, Mary Harney. We open our new offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad , India. Googlers in India have worked on products ranging from Map Maker to ads to Chrome. November We launch Google Scholar in beta. This free service helps people search scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports. December We establish Google.org , dedicated to the idea that technology can help make the world a better place. 2005 February Google Maps goes live.

Just two months later, we add satellite views and directions to the product. April Google Maps comes to mobile phones in the U.S., offering driving directions and local information to people on the go. Our first Google Maps release in Europe is geared to U.K. users. France, Germany, Italy and Spain follow in 2006. Today, we offer driving directions in 190+ countries around the world. The first video goes up on YouTube (not yet part of Google). Today, 100+ hours of video are uploaded every minute and people watch 6 billion hours of video per month! May Personalized Homepage (later iGoogle and no longer available as of November 2013) was designed for people to customize their own Google homepage with content modules. June Google Mobile Web Search is released, specially formulated for viewing search results on mobile phones. We unveil Google Earth , a satellite imagery-based mapping service that lets you take a virtual journey to any location in the world. Google Earth has since been downloaded more than 1 billion times. The Google Maps API is released; developers can embed Google Maps on many kinds of mapping services and sites.

Today there are 1 million active websites and apps using the API, reaching 1 billion people every week. August We launch Google Talk, a downloadable application that lets Gmail users to talk or instant message with friends quickly and easily; Chat comes to Gmail the following year. In 2013, we announce that Talk will be rolled into Hangouts , Google's new single communications system. October Googlers volunteer to produce an author event with Malcolm Gladwell in Mountain View. Since then, the Talks at Google program has hosted 1,500+ authors and other thought leaders in 18 offices. November We release Google Analytics for measuring the impact of websites and marketing campaigns. Analytics is based on Urchin, a company we acquired in March 2005. We announce the opening of our offices in São Paulo and Mexico City —our first in Latin America. The first Doodle 4 Google contest takes place in the United Kingdom. Since then, we've run Doodle 4 Google contests in countries across six continents, with more than 1 million doodles submitted by students eager for the chance to see their artwork on the Google homepage. December Google Transit launches in the Portland, Ore. metro area.

Today, Transit has schedules for more than 1 million public transit stops worldwide. 2006 March Google Finance launches—complete with interactive charts and related headlines from Google News—to help people to find financial information more easily. April We launch Google Calendar to help you keep track of events, special occasions and appointments, and to share schedules with others. Google Translate launches, offering translations between Arabic and English. Today our machine translation service provides translations between 70+ different languages. May We release Google Trends , a way to visualize the popularity of searches over time. Gmail launches in Arabic and Hebrew, bringing the number of interfaces up to 40. June We announce Google Checkout, a fast and easy way to pay for online purchases which paved the way for broader payments with Google Wallet . Picasa Web Albums enables Picasa users to upload and share their photos online. The Oxford English Dictionary adds the word "Google" (as a verb). August Google Apps for Your Domain is released. This suite of applications, including Gmail and Calendar, is the precursor to Google Apps Premier Edition , which launched later in the year and brings cloud computing to businesses. Today, more than 5 million businesses are using Google Apps.

October We launch Apps for Education ; our first deployment is to Arizona State University. Today Apps for EDU has more than 25 million users, and is being used by 74 of the top 100 universities. We release web-based applications Docs & Spreadsheets (now called Docs and Sheets ). Docs is a reworking of Writely (acquired in March). We announce our acquisition of YouTube . 2007 January "Fortune" announces its annual list of Best Companies to Work For and Google is #1 (we've been on top of the list three other years since). We're proud we've been able to create a company culture where employees are empowered to do cool things that matter. February This year’s Valentine's Day doodle causes a stir. Many people think we left out the "l" and linked it to a 17th century poet named Googe; others think it's homage to a band called My Bloody Valentine (the bassist's last name is Googe). Many of the 2008 Presidential candidates—including then-Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain— visit the Googleplex throughout the campaign. We add traffic information to Google Maps for 30+ cities around the U.S.

Today, live traffic data is available in 50+ countries, covering highways, streets and more in 600+ major cities. March The first "gBikes" appear on campus, giving Googlers an efficient, convenient and healthy way to get to and from meetings. Today around 700 bikes are on campus at any given moment—just one sign of Google's cycling-friendly culture. April This April Fools' Day is extra busy: not only do we introduce the Gmail Paper Archive and TiSP (Toilet Internet Service Provider) —we lose (and find) a real snake in our New York office! GOOG-411 enabled people to dial a phone number and speak a search for local information. May Street View debuts in Google Maps in five U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver. Today, Street View is available in more than 50 countries. We kick off an effort to help protect people from malicious content on the Internet. Today, approximately 1 billion people use Google Safe Browsing , which extends not only to Google’s search results and ads, but also to popular web browsers such as Chrome, Firefox and Safari, on mobile and desktop.

We expand the YouTube Partnership Program to include some of the most popular and prolific original content creators from the YouTube community. Today more than 1 million channels earn revenue from the program. We announce new strides taken towards universal search. Now video, news, books, image and local results are all integrated together in one search result. June We install solar panels on our Mountain View campus—the largest corporate solar panel installation of its kind at the time. Today the solar panels power 30 percent of the buildings they sit on. We unveil a new green initiative aimed at accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. We later retire the RechargeIT initiative , though we continue to offer electric vehicles as part of our employee car sharing service. September AdSense for Mobile is introduced, giving sites optimized for mobile browsers the ability to host the same ads as standard websites. We add a new application for making slide presentations to Google Docs. November We announce Android —the first open platform for mobile devices—and a collaboration with other companies in the Open Handset Alliance. Renewable Energy Less Than Coal (RE<C) was an initiative designed to create electricity from renewable sources that are cheaper than coal.

The program has been retired, but we continue to apply what we learned to other renewable energy projects. 2008 January The BOLD Internship program launches, providing opportunities to students historically underrepresented in tech. Combined with our other internships , over the years thousands of students have had the chance have an impact at Google, on projects from engineering to sales. March We complete the acquisition of DoubleClick , a digital marketing company that provides ad management technology for agencies, marketers and publishers. May We host the first Google I/O , our annual developer conference, in San Francisco. I/O has grown since then; in addition to the thousands of developers who join us in person every year, millions of people tune in via live stream to hear the latest news on products. June The first GoogleServe—our global week of service—takes place. Every year, Googlers leave their inboxes behind to participate in projects that give back to the community. Google Map Maker launches, enabling people to directly update geographic information in Google Maps and Google Earth—helping ensure that the map accurately reflects the world. Today Map Maker is available in 200+ countries and territories across the globe.

July We provide Street View for the entire 2008 Tour de France route—the first launch of Street View imagery in Europe. Our first downloadable iPhone app, enabling quicker mobile searching , debuts with the launch of the Apple 3G iPhone. August We launch a site dedicated to the 2008 U.S. elections. In 2012, we take this effort to the next level with Google.com/elections , providing news and online tools for elections worldwide. Google Suggest (later called Autocomplete) arrives on Google.com, helping formulate queries, reduce spelling errors and reducing keystrokes. Street View is available in several cities in Japan and Australia—the first time it's appeared outside of North America or Europe. September T-Mobile announces the G1, the first phone built on the Android operating system. Google Chrome becomes available for download, one day after a comic book announcing our new browser leaks onto the web. Five years later, Chrome boasts more than 750 million users. November The updated Google Mobile App for iPhone makes it possible for you to do a Google web search using only your voice.

After we discover a correlation between certain search queries and CDC data on flu symptoms, we release Google Flu Trends , an indicator of flu activity around the U.S. as much as two weeks earlier than traditional flu surveillance systems. 2009 February Our first message on Twitter gets back to binary: I'm 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 01111001 00001010. (Hint: it's a button on our homepage.) We launch Voice Search on Android . Android users can start searching by voice with the touch of a button, making mobile web surfing easy and fast. March We release Google Voice , which improves the way you use your phone, with features like voicemail transcription.

In 2013, we announce that Voice will be integrated into Google+ Hangouts. We announce Google Ventures , a venture capital fund aimed at using our resources to support innovation and encourage promising new technology companies. In 2013, Google Ventures added its 200th portfolio company. We launch a beta test of interest-based advertising on partner sites and on YouTube. This kind of tailored advertising lets us show ads more closely related to users' interests, and it gives advertisers an efficient way to reach those most likely to be interested in their products or services. April Our April Fools' Day prank this year is CADIE, our "Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity" who spends the day taking over various Google products before self-destructing. May To clear brush and reduce fire hazard in the fields near our Mountain View headquarters, we rent some goats from a local company. They help us trim the grass the low-carbon way. July We (literally) take the beta label off both the enterprise and consumer versions of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk. We announce that we're developing Google Chrome OS , an open source, lightweight operating system initially targeted at laptops.

September We introduce the DoubleClick Ad Exchange , a real-time marketplace that helps large online publishers on one side; and ad networks and agency networks on the other, buy and sell display advertising space. On the birthday of the "father of science fiction," we unveil the truth behind a mysterious series of doodles in tribute to H.G. Wells. October Google Maps Navigation is a turn-by-turn GPS navigation system with 3D views, voice guidance and live traffic data. November We release an international series of doodles for the 40th anniversary of "Sesame Street." December Just in time for the holidays we roll out Mac and Linux versions of Google Chrome , as well as extensions for Chrome in Windows and Linux (all in beta). 2010 January We introduce the Nexus One to show what's possible on Android devices. The Nexus line of devices has since grown and now includes tablets as well as phones. In response to the Haiti earthquake, engineers build Person Finder to connect loved ones in the wake of disasters. We've since launched Person Finder for other crises—including the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan—and formed Google Crisis Response , a team that responds to global disasters.

After detecting a sophisticated cyberattack from China, we announce we are no longer willing to continue censoring our services on Google.cn, our local domain. Today, users in mainland China can access search via Google.com.hk. February The first-ever Google Super Bowl ad tells a love story through search terms. This is one of many videos made to celebrate the human side of search. We announce a plan to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks , delivering Internet speeds up to 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today. More than 1,000 communities submit proposals in response. March Bike directions and bike trail data come to Google Maps . Today, there are more than 330,000 miles (530,000 kilometers) of biking trails and paths in Google Maps to help you get around on your two wheels. April We change our name to Topeka for April Fools' Day—a tribute to Topeka, Kansas, which changed its name to Google as part of an effort to bring Fiber to that city. We're the first company to launch a website publishing the number of requests we get from governments to provide information about our users or to remove content from Google products.

Later in the year, we add visualizations showing disruptions in visitor traffic to our products, such as a government blocking access or a cable being cut. May As part of our efforts to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy, we make our first direct investment in a utility-scale renewable energy project. Google TV is built on Android and Chrome and gives you an easy and fast way to navigate to television channels, websites, apps, shows and movies. In celebration of PAC-MAN’s 30th birthday, we release our first-ever playable doodle , complete with all 256 levels and Ms. PAC-MAN. We acquire AdMob , a mobile display advertising company. July As part of our long-term goal to power our operations with 100% renewable energy, we announce an agreement to purchase the clean energy from 114 megawatts of wind generation in Iowa. “Life in a Day” is a cinematic experiment to document one day as seen through the eyes of people around the world—created with thousands of submissions from YouTube users. August Priority Inbox helps you handle information overload in Gmail by automatically sorting your email by importance, using a variety of signals.

“The Wilderness Downtown” is a musical experience created by writer/director Chris Milk with the band Arcade Fire and Google, built with Google Chrome in mind using HTML5 and other technologies. September Google Instant shows you search results as you type so you can quickly get to the information you’re looking for. Three years after we first launched Street View in five U.S. cities, you can explore all seven continents at eye level with the addition of Brazil, Ireland and Antarctica imagery. October We announce we've developed technology for cars that can drive themselves; we think self-driving cars can help prevent traffic accidents, free up people’s time and reduce carbon emissions. Our automated cars have since logged more than 500,000 miles on the road. December YouTube introduces TrueView , a new kind of ad—after 5 seconds, if an ad doesn't seem relevant or interesting to you, you can skip it. TrueView is part of our effort to ensure viewers watch ads that are most relevant to them, and advertisers reach the right audience. 2011 February The Google Art Project lets you virtually tour some of of the world’s best museums and explore high resolution images of tens of thousands of works of art from 40 countries.

We introduce an advanced opt-in security feature called 2-step verification to help people keep their Google Accounts secure. 2-step verification is now available in 40 languages and 150+ countries. March The new +1 button lets you publicly give something a “thumbs up,” helping your friends and contacts find the best stuff online. April Larry Page takes over as CEO —10 years after he last held the title. Eric Schmidt becomes executive chairman. Charlie Chaplin’s 122nd birthday is the occasion for our first-ever live-action doodle . May Google Wallet makes it convenient to shop in-store, online or on the go, and helps merchants simplify the checkout experience. Google Offers kicks off in beta in Portland, Ore. We announce the first Chromebooks from partners Samsung and Acer. Chromebooks are designed to be fast, simple, secure and easy to keep updated. June Our playable doodle in honor of guitar inventor Les Paul becomes the most popular Google doodle of all time. in just 48 hours in the U.S., you recorded 5.1 years worth of music—40 million songs—using our doodle guitar. And those songs were played back 870,000 times!

We install a corporate electric vehicle charging infrastructure . Today it's the largest in the country, with charging at 750+ parking spaces. We add speech recognition into search on desktop for Chrome users. Simply click the microphone in the Google search box, and you can speak your search. The Google+ project —real-life sharing, rethought for the web—launches. All our products start getting a design makeover, beginning with our homepage. July Talented young scientists wow the judges at the inaugural Google Science Fair , an online science competition open to students aged 13-18 from around the world. AdWords Express is a faster and simpler way for small businesses to start advertising online in under five minutes. August We bring offline access to Gmail, Calendar and Docs for people using Chrome. September We acquire Zagat to help you find the very best places. October Android 4.0, a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich , is designed to work on both phones and tablets, and to make the power of Android enticing and intuitive. November We launch Google+ Pages to connect you with the businesses, organizations and other things you care about. We have a few of our own sharing updates about the company.

Google Maps now helps you to figure out where you are and get directions when you're inside a building like an airport or mall. December Android Market exceeds 10 billion app downloads—with a growth rate of one billion app downloads per month. We open a new office in Paris , a symbol of our commitment to one of Europe’s fastest-growing Internet economies. The new office is also home to the Google Cultural Institute. 2012 January We join thousands of other sites to encourage users to stand up against two legislative proposals in the U.S. (SOPA and PIPA) which would have censored the Internet and impeded innovation. The next day, the bills are set aside. More than 7 million Internet users sign the petition hosted at google.com/takeaction . February Chrome launches on Android, so you can take the same simple, fast and secure web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices. Three months later we launch Chrome on iOS. March Android Market becomes Google Play , a digital content store offering apps, games, books, movies, music and more.

April It's our busiest April Fools’ Day ever, launching Google Maps 8-bit for NES , our Canine Staffing Team , NASCAR’s race car of the future (hint: it drives itself) and more. May Hangouts On Air become available worldwide. Many public figures and organizations have hosted Hangouts to connect directly with the public, including U.S. President Barack Obama, NASA, David Beckham, Taylor Swift and U.N. Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon. We introduce the Knowledge Graph in Search, which makes it easier for you to discover information about real-world things—landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, movies, works of art and more. This launch is built on our acquisition in 2010 of Metaweb. We acquire Motorola Mobility . Our doodle in honor of Dr. Robert Moog , the inventor of the electronic analog Synthesizer, is an interactive, playable logo that allows you to record, play back and share songs. We expand our Transparency Report with a new section on copyright , providing information on the number of requests we get from copyright owners to remove Google Search results because they allegedly link to infringing content.

We transition Google Product Search to Google Shopping to help people research products and connect directly with merchants to make purchases. June We unveil DoubleClick Digital Marketing , our new platform that enables seamless ad campaign management for agencies and advertisers. We announce Google Now , which brings you the information you need, before you even ask, like what today’s weather will be like, how much traffic to expect on your way to work or your favorite team's score while they’re playing. We release the first Nexus 7 —a powerful 7" tablet designed to bring Google Play content to life and bring you the best of Google in the palm of your hand. Later in the year, the Nexus family expands to include a 10" tablet and the Nexus 4 phone. Trekker is a way to capture Street View imagery of beautiful places that are only accessible by foot (like the Grand Canyon or the Galapagos). July The world sees the Olympics live on YouTube for the first time. Viewers watched a total of 230 million video streams, and our partnership with NBC makes it the most live-streamed Olympics to date. October We provide an unprecedented look inside our data centers . The Samsung Chromebook becomes available for just $249.

Google Crisis Response launches Public Alerts —warnings for natural disasters and emergency situations—the same day we publish resources to respond to Superstorm Sandy. November We begin installing Google Fiber —ultra-high speed Internet access that is up to 100 times faster than today’s average broadband—for our first customers in Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City Missouri. The next year, we announce Fiber in Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah. December Lady Ada Lovelace, mathematician and writer known to many people as the world’s first computer programmer, gets a doodle . 2013 January We commit to invest $200 million in a wind farm in west Texas. This brings our total clean energy commitments to more than $1 billion, which can generate over 2 GW—enough to power all the public elementary schools in New York, Wyoming and Oregon for a year. February We introduce enhanced campaigns , which updates AdWords for the multi-screen world. In 50 words, tomorrow’s Glass Explorers tell us what they would do if they had Glass. The first Explorers get Glass later in the year. Our newest laptop—the Chromebook Pixel —is designed from the ground up for power users who have embraced the cloud.

April Get just the information you need right when you need it with the release of Google Now for iPhone and iPad . Plan your digital afterlife with Inactive Account Manager , which enables you to tell us what to do with your data from Google services if your account becomes inactive for any reason. May A video doodle for graphic designer and filmmaker Saul Bass celebrates his classic film credits and posters. We release imagery of the Earth taken from space over a quarter-century, providing a stunning historical perspective on the changes to the Earth’s surface over time. Google Play Music All Access , a new monthly music subscription service, lets you listen to millions of songs across your devices. We introduce a new Google+ Photos experience that helps your photos look their best, as well as Hangouts , which will be Google’s single communications system, replacing Google Talk, Google+ Hangouts and Messenger. Gmail gets a brand new inbox that helps you see what’s new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read when. June We unveil our latest Google[x] project: balloon-powered Internet access. We hope Project Loon can become an option for connecting rural, remote and underserved areas, and for crisis response communications. We acquire Waze to help you outsmart traffic.

Funded by Google, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory investigates the energy impact of cloud computing. Their research indicates that moving all office workers in the United States to the cloud could reduce the energy used by information technology by up to 87 percent. July Just months after we preview the new Maps for desktop at Google I/O, we release the updated Google Maps app for smartphones and tablets —part of our redesign of Maps across devices. Chromecast is a small and affordable device that makes it easy to use your phone, tablet or laptop to bring your favorite online entertainment to your TV screen. We team up with Starbucks to bring faster, free WiFi connections to all 7,000 company-operated Starbucks stores in the U.S. September Android passes 1 billion device activations —reflecting the work of the entire Android ecosystem and thanks to the enthusiasm of users all around the world. We announce Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being, with Arthur D. Levinson as CEO. October KitKat delivers a smarter, more immersive Android experience to even more people. We also introduce the new Nexus 5 . An update to Google+ Photos makes it easier to find, perfect and share your best life moments.

November Street View comes to Venice , bringing you panoramic views of one of the world's most beautiful cities. December 2014 January We acquire Nest —a company that reinvents unloved products for the home, like thermostats and smoke alarms. We announce a new Google[x] project focused on using miniaturized electronics in a contact lens to measure glucose levels and help people with diabetes. February Working with organization Polar Bears International, we collect Street View imagery of the Canadian tundra , giving you an intimate look at polar bears in their natural habitat. Chromebox for meetings brings together Google+ Hangouts and Google Apps to make it simpler for any company to have high-definition video meetings. April Street View in Google Maps now lets you explore historical imagery dating back to 2007. May Our first 3D doodle celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Rubik's Cube . The next leg in the journey for our self-driving cars is prototypes that are designed to operate safely and autonomously without requiring human intervention. We publicly share data about the diversity of our workforce. June Made with Code is a new initiative aims to inspire girls to code.

At our annual I/O conference, we announce new updates that bring Android to you wherever you are—in your car, on your TV and on your wrist. July During the World Cup, we share 100+ real-time search trends showing what people were curious about during the tournament, and create 60+ doodles live from Brazil. August Gmail and Calendar now recognize addresses that contain accented or non-Latin characters. September We introduce the first family of Android One phones in India. We reintroduce our Enterprise business as Google for Work . You can now make voice calls in Hangouts from your phones or desktop computer for free. October We launch Android Lollipop , designed for a multi-screen world. New Nexus 6, 9 and Player devices come along for the ride. Inbox —from the Gmail team—is a different take on email , designed to focus on what really matters. The people behind Google – Company – Google What we do The people behind Google Building great products depends on great people. There are more than 40,000 Googlers behind the tools that you use every day—from search to Chrome. Find out more about what it’s like to work at Google, where we work and who drives our company strategy below.

Here's What Happens To Google Employees When They Die Here's What Happens To Google Employees When They Die {{article.article.images.featured.caption}} Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Full Bio The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. Loading ... This story appears in the {{article.article.magazine.pretty_date}} issue of {{article.article.magazine.pubName}}. Subscribe Google employee benefits last into the afterlife It’s no surprise that the employee benefits of Google are among the best in the land— free haircuts , gourmet food , on-site doctors and high-tech “cleansing” toilets are among the most talked-about—but in a rare interview with Chief People Officer Laszlo Bock I discovered that the latest perk for Googlers extends into the afterlife. “This might sound ridiculous,” Bock told me recently in a conversation on the ever-evolving benefits at Google, “But we’ve announced death benefits at Google.” We were scheduled for a talk on Google’s widening age-gap (the oldest Googler is currently 83); I wanted to know how child- and healthcare benefits have evolved as the company has scaled.

Instead, Bock, who joined the company in 2006 after a stint with General Electric , blew me away by disclosing a never-before-made-public-perk: Should a U.S. Googler pass away while under the employ of the 14-year old search giant, their surviving spouse or domestic partner will receive a check for 50% of their salary every year for the next decade. Even more surprising, a Google spokesperson confirms that there's "no tenure requirement" for this benefit, meaning most of their 34 thousand Google employees qualify. “One of the things we realized recently was that one of the harshest but most reliable facts of life is that at some point most of us will be confronted with the death of our partners,” Bock says. “And it’s a horrible, difficult time no matter what, and every time we went through this as a company we tried to find ways to help the surviving spouse of the Googler who’d passed away.” The case-by-case do-goodery was formally implemented in 2011.

In addition to the 10-year pay package, surviving spouses will see all stocks vested immediately and any children will receive a $1,000 monthly payment from the company until they reach the age of 19 (or 23 if the child is a full-time student). What makes the death benefit notable isn’t just its generosity—Google is, of course, far from cash-strapped—but rather that, unlike most employee perks on Google campuses that aim to increase happiness, creativity and productivity, providing death benefits is a no-win for the company. “Obviously there’s no benefit to Google,” Bock concedes. “But it’s important to the company to help our families through this horrific if inevitable life event.” Google has been anticipating the major life events of their employees since day one. According to Bock, Sergey Brin got the ball rolling when the company had fewer than 100 employees, suggesting that the company could provide a nanny to each working mom or dad on staff. (“Obviously that’s an idea that’s been toned down,” Bock jokes). The company does have on-site child care but has raised its monthly fees significantly in recent years.

In maternity and paternity leave, however, Google benefits are at the head of the pack: according to a company spokesperson, new dads enjoy six weeks of paid leave while moms can take 18 weeks after the birth of a child. (Even better for the cash-strapped new parents: stocks will continue to vest on your leave). But the link between maternity benefits and retaining employees is clear. According to a 2008 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 60 percent of men and women in the work force have kids under the age of 6, so anticipating their needs can mean keeping new parents on-board and, most importantly, engaged. “When we think about [employee] needs at Google, we think less about how old you are that we do about your particular cluster of needs,” Bock says.

“For someone who fits a certain profile—say, an aging parent to take care of, or kids or grandkids to support--whatever your cluster of needs are, we do our best to discern the best package of perks and programs to meet them.” Google People experts use three methods to tap into the needs of employees: an annual survey called “Googlegeist” that measures the temperature of employees in every department and analyzes data to identify emerging trends, employee resource groups (read: clubs) where like-minded employees share ideas that are funneled up to HR (Bock says the most active are the “Grayglers,” the self-titled club for over-the-hill Googlers), and email aliases that run the gamut from financial advice to childcare options to café feedback. Google gets a lot of press for its perks, Bock says, but he’s loath to even use that word. “People say ‘you’re Google, of course you can offer these crazy things,’” but from where Bock sits, it’s not even about the money. “There is, of course, research that show employee benefit programs like ours can improve retention, and appear to improve performance on some level,” he says.

“But it turns out that the reason we’re doing these things for employees is not because it’s important to the business, but simply because it’s the right thing to do. When it comes down to it, it’s better to work for a company who cares about you than a company who doesn’t. And from a company standpoint, that makes it better to care than not to care.” ***

Question: Which major company employ a 'Chief Doodler'?
Answer: Google